The Pleasure House

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The Pleasure House Page 1

by Kitty Thomas




  The Pleasure House

  Kitty Thomas

  Burlesque Press

  Contents

  Publisher's Note:

  Author's Note:

  BOOK ONE: Guilty Pleasures

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  BOOK TWO: Broken Dolls

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  30. BOOK THREE: Surrender

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  BOOK FOUR: Pretty Lies

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Epilogue

  58. BOOK FIVE: Twisted Fates

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Acknowledgments

  The Pleasure House

  Kitty Thomas

  Digital Edition

  Copyright © 2020 Kitty Thomas

  all rights reserved.

  Digital Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Publisher's Note:

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Contact [email protected]

  Author's Note:

  This is a box set of my COMPLETE 5-book Pleasure House world. Books Included: Guilty Pleasures, Broken Dolls, Surrender, Pretty Lies, and Twisted Fates.

  "Kitty Thomas is a one-click author for me!" -Anna Zaires, NYT Bestselling author of Twist Me

  Guilty Pleasures:

  She was a bored housewife until she was taken and trained for the pleasure of the highest bidder.

  Vivian Delaney leads a life of privilege, but behind closed doors she feels isolated and trapped in a gilded cage. Unable to achieve sexual pleasure with her husband, she finds herself in the capable hands of Anton, a massage therapist intent on awakening her to her full sexual potential. By any means necessary.

  Broken Dolls:

  Mina Calloway always finds herself in the hands of the wrong master: Gentle at first, then brutally sadistic and abusive. She no longer believes it’s possible to find a man who will be gentle with her. After seeing a kink-friendly therapist for months, the doctor makes her an illicit offer she isn’t yet smart enough to refuse: “Let me find you a good master.”

  Brian Sloan is a borderline sociopath with a dark and brutal past. Only taking his sadistic urges out on the women at a submissive training house allows him to sleep through the night. When Brian sees Mina, she should be ripe for the picking, but her damage is too similar to his own. Can he fight past his demons to protect the one person he considers worth saving?

  Surrender:

  Julie wants Gabe Griffin like fish want water, but what she wants is sweet domestic bliss and a white picket fence. What Gabe wants is to put a collar around Julie’s throat and train her in the finer points of being his slave.

  At first too innocent, then too broken, can Julie ever surrender to the man intent on claiming her?

  Pretty Lies:

  "She told pretty lies to the wrong man and now she must give herself to him to save her sister’s life"

  As a phone sex operator, Annette Waincott knows how to tease to get what she wants. That is, until she teases the wrong man at a club, claiming kinky fantasies she doesn’t really have. It must have been too much vodka and his tantalizing Russian accent. Too bad he believes her.

  When the Russian accidentally kidnaps her twin sister as part of an ill-fated sex game, things quickly get real. In a desperate bid to free her twin, Annette offers herself to him in trade. He both terrifies and excites her, but she knows she can never trust him. The things he wants will push her to her limits and beyond. And this time, she can't tell pretty lies and run away.

  Twisted Fates:

  When Lindsay Smith brought her to the house, it was to train and sell her. They both knew it. She'd agreed to this arrangement. She wanted to belong to someone. But Lindsay wanted her to be his.

  Three days into her stay at the pleasure house, Shannon Foster's life is forever destroyed by a sociopathic monster. Lindsay saved her life that day, but the scars bind her to the house without a future.

  Now, eight years later, Lindsay saves her once again, only this time he's playing for keeps.

  BOOK ONE: Guilty Pleasures

  1

  When will this be over? The headboard of the bed thumped against the wall in rhythm to Michael’s thrusts while Vivian perfected her dead fish act. What was the saying? Close your eyes and think of England? It had been six weeks since they’d had sex. Her husband’s nagging had finally pushed her over the edge.

  Nothing in this interaction could be called making love. But it couldn’t be called fucking either. With fucking, you at least got off. Vivian hadn’t had an orgasm in two years, and even then it was acquired with her own fingers. Whoever said the thirties was a woman’s sexual peak had sold her a line of shit.

  A trickle of sweat from Michael’s brow dripped off his face and slid between her breasts. She wondered how much time, free from his touch, this mockery of the sexual act would buy her. Vivian’s shopping list scrolled through her head, a welcome distraction.

  He grunted indelicately and came.

  Birth control for such an infrequent joining. What a waste of money. Then again, Michael was rolling in money. He collapsed on top of her with a groan, his skin slick with sweat. She lay there, barely breathing, waiting. A couple of minutes of this pseudo-intimacy passed before he rolled off her.

  “I’m going to take a shower. I’ll
be late for work.”

  She didn’t bother bringing up the fact that he owned the company. Michael had a pathological need to be punctual.

  He reached out to touch her again, and she couldn’t stop the instinct to pull away. His answering look of contempt made her feel dirty for having had sex with her own husband.

  “You’re never here with me,” he said.

  Vivian rolled over, ignoring the accusation. He’d just had an orgasm. She hadn’t, and he never seemed to care to help her with that matter. Even as she thought it, she knew she was lying to herself.

  He’d made the effort, and she’d been just as unresponsive. Just as frigid. She’d pushed his fingers away from her clit, just wanting him to do what he was going to do, so they could be done with it, and she could try to forget her day had started this way.

  A loud sigh came from his side of the bed, then footsteps receded to the bathroom. The door slammed. Vivian waited for the shower to start before getting up. She’d use the bathroom on the first floor, and with any luck, Michael would be out of the house by the time she got through.

  She’d almost finished washing the memory of him off her body when a sharp rap sounded on the door.

  “Vivi!”

  She shut off the water and wrapped a towel around herself.

  “What?”

  “After the shit you just pulled you’re really not making me breakfast, either?”

  She flung the door open, the steam flowing out of the bathroom as if pre-announcing her ire. “You have some fucking nerve. You knew I wasn’t in the mood.”

  “When are you ever in the mood?”

  There were a million things she wanted to say, but she didn’t know how to express how violated she felt every time he touched her. She wasn’t even sure it was his fault anymore. She wasn’t sure it was anyone’s fault. She just couldn’t come. It took too long. It was too difficult. She’d given up her own pleasure and resented her husband for not joining her and giving up his.

  Though how much satisfaction he got fucking her limp, disinterested body was anybody’s guess.

  Instead of saying any of this, she brushed past him down the hallway to the kitchen, leaving a trail of water in her wake. “What do you want?”

  “Coffee and toast is fine. An orange if we have any. I don’t have time for much else. I have a meeting.”

  She felt his eyes on her as she took the bread from the bread box and slid two slices into the chrome toaster. The appliance made four at a time, but she couldn’t bring herself to sit across a table from him. When she turned, the look in his eyes was hungry for something he hadn’t gotten upstairs and wasn’t about to have served to him on a plate with a cup of coffee.

  Vivian turned away again to get his fruit. She had some idea of where his mind had just gone. Seven years of marriage will do that to you. He was likely picturing himself ripping the towel off her and fucking her on the kitchen island. It was a hot idea in theory, but in practice sexual fantasies weren’t hot for her. She’d long given up fantasizing because she was tired of the disappointing reality.

  It wasn’t him. He was beautiful. His blue eyes used to make her heart beat faster. The slight dimple in his cheek had brought out her own smile. He worked out three times a week and had a golden tan. Nearly every time he stepped out of the shower she had the almost maddening urge to lick the drops of water off his body.

  But that would lead to sex.

  “This shit has to stop, Vivi. You act like it’s a crime for me to want to have sex with my own wife.”

  She bristled. “You treat me like I’m your fucking property. Here to cook and clean up after you and spread my legs whenever you get the urge.”

  The glare in his eyes was predatory, just shy of pure evil. “I get the urge every day. More than once a day. I’ve pressed for sex maybe three times in the past month.”

  “Whatever.” She put his toast and orange on a plate, poured coffee, then set the dishes on the table as hard as she could without breaking anything. The coffee sloshed around the edges of the mug.

  “Are you going to clean that up?”

  Vivian left the kitchen without a response and climbed the stairs, locking the bedroom door behind her. The tears she’d held back came spilling out. She bit back the sobs before they became loud enough for Michael to hear. He’d only think she was crying to get her way. He’d never understand.

  She felt trapped in a marriage everyone believed was perfect. And she couldn’t tell anyone they were wrong because the illusion was the only good thing she had going. She had no marketable skills, no fucking degree. He’d been Prince Charming, and she’d been in a fairy tale. She hadn’t realized her happily ever after came with the strings of a gilded cage.

  How had she allowed herself to become so isolated? There was no one Vivian could call family, but she’d once had friends. Before Michael had whisked her away into a socio-economic class that seemed to shut everyone but others of means out. The connections she’d forged with her husband’s social circle felt shallow and claustrophobic at best.

  The front door slammed, and she went to stand in front of the window, wiping the tears off her face. The next door neighbor was working in her garden, wearing an outfit that made it look like she only pretended to garden in porn. Her shorts were short, frayed denim that showed too much of her ass. And she wore a bikini top tied together with strings that looked as if they were about to come undone. Her feet were encased in the least sensible shoes it was possible for a gardener to wear.

  Vivian raised the window as quietly as possible.

  “Good morning, Jewel. You’re up awfully early this morning,” Michael said, oozing charm.

  Vivian gritted her teeth as she watched the rehearsed bullshit artist and aspiring porn star. Jewel giggled. “Hello, Michael. You know I get up this early just to see you off.”

  He chuckled and got in the car. When the BMW left the driveway, Vivian slammed the window shut. Jewel looked up from her garden and smiled, her hand moving up in a wave. Vivian smiled and waved back.

  It was hard to know if her neighbor was the most conniving slut this side of the Atlantic, or if she really was that innocent and unaware of her own glaringly loud sexuality.

  The doorbell rang a few minutes later, and Vivian raised the window again. “Just a minute.”

  She threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, pausing in front of the vanity to swipe a dab of concealer under her eyes. Maybe it wouldn’t look like she’d been crying.

  “Have you had breakfast yet?” Jewel said as soon as the door opened.

  “No, I just made something for Michael.”

  “Good. I made homemade muffins, and I want you to try them.” She grabbed Vivian’s hand to drag her out of the house.

  “I don’t have shoes on.”

  “It’s not hot out yet. You’re fine. Don’t be such a baby.”

  Vivian sighed and allowed herself to be dragged. What the hell is wrong with me? She’s not a slut. She’s just a 21-year-old kid with a trust fund, having fun.

  “Do you like my new shoes? I was coming over to show you but got side-tracked by some weeds. I don’t get why they keep growing in the flowers. I’m doing everything right.”

  “They’re very cute.” Great. Keep talking so I feel like an even bigger bitch.

  They pushed past three yapping Yorkies into the kitchen. “It’s my grandmother’s recipe. I don’t think I have it right yet, but hopefully they’re edible.”

  The tears Vivian thought she’d managed to stifle, came pouring out again.

  “Oh honey, what’s wrong?”

  She wiped her face quickly as if in doing so she could make Jewel forget the sudden outburst.

  “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  The woman arched a brow but decided to let it go in favor of prying the muffins out of the pan.

  “Are these fresh blueberries?” Vivian asked when she bit into one.

  Jewel beamed. “Oh good, you can tell. I picked some up from th
e farmers’ market yesterday.”

  The dogs had positioned themselves on the floor in front of the two women, staring and willing something to fall that they could fight over.

  “Are you going to tell me why you were crying?”

  Vivian waved a hand in dismissal. “Really, nothing. Michael and I had a fight.”

  “Oh.” Jewel looked wistfully away, twirling a strand of blonde hair while she ate.

  Vivian could tell from the faraway look in her eyes what she was thinking, and wondered once again if Michael was having an affair. What a thrill it must be to get away with it right under the wife’s nose.

 

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